Pubdate: Wed, 8 Aug 2001 Source: New York Times (NY) Copyright: 2001 The New York Times Company Contact: http://www.nytimes.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/298 Author: Juan Forero RANCHERS IN COLOMBIA BANKROLL THE VIGILANTES MONTERIA, Colombia - A few years ago, Sergio Ochoa all but abandoned his ranch. Leftist guerrillas were extorting money from landowners and torching the homes of those who did not pay. Some cattlemen, including Mr. Ochoa's brother, were kidnapped. Others were killed. "I had 14 extortion letters from these people," Mr. Ochoa said. "The guerrillas used to be all over." Today Mr. Ochoa's ranch is inside a swath of northern Colombia that is one of the few rural areas not under the guerrillas' sway. The reason is no secret: an organization of paramilitary fighters, the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, has wiped three rebel groups from the area in a fierce campaign characterized by massacres of peasants and assassinations. Now an aggressive investigation by the national attorney general is vividly showing how landowners and businessmen here in Córdoba and in a neighboring province - the heart of the country's prime cattle-raising region - donated heavily to transform a small group of outlaws into an 8,000-man militia. In the process the Self-Defense Forces have become a huge challenge to President Andrés Pastrana's administration, which is under pressure from alarmed officials in Washington and Europe to dismantle the organization. At the same time, the president and his advisers are in difficult peace negotiations with the guerrillas, talks that the paramilitary forces violently oppose. Indeed, those forces have stepped up the killings, slaying not only rebels but also trade unionists, peasant leaders, human rights workers and others they deem collaborators with the rebels. Already this year, paramilitary gunmen have killed nearly 1,300 people, according to the government's human rights ombudsman. The government faces an entrenched, generously financed organization, one that earns huge sums from the cocaine trade and also benefits from the collaboration of some military units. But perhaps more troubling to Colombia's democracy is how outwardly respectable citizens, fed up with the government's failure to control the guerrillas, have willingly financed the paramilitary group. "How do you defend yourself against a well-armed, well-trained and numerous guerrilla force?" said one established rancher, Rodrigo García Caicedo, who admitted having donated in the past. "With an equally well-armed, well-trained and numerous organization." People in Córdoba are, indeed, effusive about the Self-Defense Forces, perhaps nowhere more so than in the foothills of the Sinú Mountains, southeast of Montería. In the town of Valencia, ground zero for guerrilla activity a decade ago, some speak of the paramilitary fighters as saviors, not only for battling rebels but also for paving a few roads and bringing electricity to some hamlets. "The Self-Defense Forces are a cry of hope for everyone," said Cecilia Vargas, principal of a school outside the town that was built with paramilitary money. "We believe that without the Self-Defense Forces, which is the brake on the guerrillas, we would not be able to live here." But critics say the government cannot allow such support to continue. "The government has to demonstrate that it will not let an illegitimate organization benefit from illegitimate support," said Michael Gold-Biss, a Colombian-born expert on the country at St. Cloud State University in Minnesota. "That's why the attorney general's office has to be assertive, go to Montería to dismantle some of this." It remains unclear how much money the Self-Defense Forces have collected. But an American investigator in the United States Embassy who has tracked paramilitary financing schemes for years, speaking on condition of anonymity, says the group has anywhere from $200 million to $1 billion in bank and investment accounts in Switzerland, Italy, Luxembourg and other countries. Untold sums are also in Colombia, said the investigator, who added that the group most likely hid assets in the form of hotels, shopping centers and other property under its control. "The Self-Defense Forces do not need to work hard to find resources," Isabel Cristina Bolaños Dereix, a former member knowledgeable about fund-raising, told investigators. "If they legalized the Self-Defense Forces, many people would confess that they are giving money," she said, according to a transcript of her interrogation last September. Indeed, documents from the inquiry, filed with a court in Bogotá, show that the group operated a network of accountants and middlemen who collected donations, then used front companies to funnel the money to the paramilitary forces. Some details of the money-raising scheme came to light in May, when the attorney general's office raided the homes and organizations of suspected paramilitary group members and their supporters in Montería, carting off documents and computers and arresting four people. Thirty more are now being sought. The attorney general told the court that donations generated from those and other groups supported an extreme right aimed at combating guerrillas on one hand, but also waging "a war without quarter against the Colombian left." The documents said the violence was produced by "very defined sectors of society, like large landowners, ranchers, industrialists and financiers" who worked with drug traffickers, military officers and politicians to defend their interests. And they have done so through donations in the millions of dollars. "In these documents we have been able to establish the expenditures for provisions and general costs," a high-ranking official in the attorney general's office said. "We have been able to follow the money." But the attorney general's office faces daunting obstacles. The office is underfinanced and must often depend on the army to protect its investigators during dangerous operations. Several prosecutors have been assassinated in recent years; others have fled the country. Prosecutors uncovered records, though, of outlays for arms, medicine, clothing and other necessities, as well as proof of paramilitary bank accounts, evidence that then led to the May raid, according to records filed in court in June. The investigators determined that a nonprofit organization called the Foundation for Peace of Córdoba, seemingly set up to distribute farms to landless peasants, was in reality a money-collecting front whose directors and main benefactors were either paramilitary leaders or relatives, according to court records. At least two other front companies - Compañía Limited and Caheca Limited - worked with the foundation. In three years the foundation managed more than $12 million, according to the Bogotá newspaper El Espectador, the first to report some of the investigation's findings. The American investigator said, "It becomes hard to follow the funds when they move through an apparently legal structure." Perhaps the most intriguing discovery in the last few months of the investigation is 200 tapes of phone conversations between paramilitary leaders like Carlos Castaño and prominent citizens, say officials familiar with the investigation. In the ranch lands of southwestern Córdoba, people said raising money had never been hard. "The fund-raising for the paramilitaries is easy, simple," said one prominent community leader. "They just go to Mr. So-and-So Rancher and say, `Look, do you feel safe?' He'll say: `Yes, I do. I can come here with my family.' They will then ask, `Well, please give us what you can.' " Ms. Bolaños, the former paramilitary member, said the group used an office solely to oversee the national collection of funds. But the various units of the organization often determine how much residents will donate, often depending on the size of a ranch. "I have visited commanders who do big meetings with people who live in their region and they allow those people to decide how much they give," Ms. Bolaños said. In Córdoba most ranchers, civic leaders and other prominent people who spoke about the organization recently said they had never given it money. But most also lauded the group for undertaking a job they said the government had long ignored. "We prefer to have the paramilitaries here, and not the guerrillas," explained Luis Alfredo García, president of a ranchers group, Ganacor, which was among the targets of the May raid. "That does not mean that I am financing and helping the Self- Defense Forces." When asked about documented cases of rights abuses committed by the paramilitary forces, many said they believed that those killed had been rebels, or that the violations had been committed by guerrillas, then blamed on the paramilitaries. "People here say we can go to our farms and sleep in peace, thanks to these men," said Mr. García Caicedo, the rancher who acknowledged giving money in the past. "If we do not cooperate with these people, what would happen to us?" - --- MAP posted-by: Jo-D